I’m going to be a very different kind of star

Bret Easton Ellis and Alex Israel collaborate on an L.A. centric project at the Gagosian

It seems like a match made in heaven, that of satirist and novelist Bret Easton Ellis and artist Alex Israel, both Los Angeles’ biggest critics, but also greatest fans. The two teamed up for the project “Alex Israel/Bret Easton Ellis”, which is showing at Gagosian in Beverly Hills for a few more days.

As one might expect, Los Angeles culture and its paradoxes are the main characters of the project, which references Uber drivers, plastic surgery, and L.A. socialite meeting spots, just to name a few.

A series of dreamy landscapes and suggestive shadows of palm trees are juxtaposed to short pieces of text, at first glance not unlike those cheesy pseudo-profound memes going around social media. Yet the prose is characterized by a snarky cynicism that sheds light on the project’s self-reflective and satirical qualities.

The show will run through April 23rd at the Gagosian in Beverly Hills.